Contests & Promotions

My last article was an overview of the former Extended Reanimation environment with a quick tournament report ( http://www.cardshark.com/content/view_article.asp?article_id=3831 ). In this article and one more to follow, I’m going to look at Reanimation strategies for the Post Rotation Extended (which essentially is Online Extended with Ravnica added in).

I’ll save the discussion on more typical Reanimation decks for my next article (hint – Akroma is still really good). In this article, I want to explore a little more off the beaten path strategy – abusing Bladewing the Risen

My last article looked at many of the Reanimation spells that were available in the format up to Mirrodin. I’ll update the list to include the current sets. I think it is important to look past a purely graveyard strategy for Reanimation. Reanimation is all about getting a very large creature into play so quickly in the game that your opponents cannot find an answer before the game ends. Tooth and Nail

for one extra Black mana. Allows you to return an artifact or a creature and it does go back into your deck. At 5 mana, it doesn’t seem like it is fast enough. Maybe it could be used to get very expensive artifacts into play but it still isn’t being cast very early.

There actually are a few pretty good artifact creatures available in new Extended and some powerful artifacts as well. There are even a few artifact Dragons. Situational, but meet the general theme. Since artifact lands are not banned in Extended, it could have some use.

Normally used with some sort of token generator or Blinkmouth Nexus and Akroma as the real goal. It is very mana intensive, and isn’t that hard to disrupt as it often is not activated the turn it comes into play. The ability to stack your deck makes it a good combo piece with Goblin Charbelcher

Legends only and they’re removed from the game at the end of the turn. Interesting as it is an Instant and there are a few work-arounds for the remove at end of turn. Not quite so great if you need to keep attacking with what you Reanimate

I can almost see R&D when it comes to Reanimation cards. If it even looks like it might be a little good, they make it bad. This card doesn’t give Haste and you sacrifice the creature at the end of the turn? And it costs 3 mana? And it is a Sorcery?

in the graveyard and a few other good cards this could be pretty good. There even was a Block deck built around this card. I actually faced that deck in a block tournament. The standard combo uses Laquatus’s Champion to do massive damage.

and suffers from the same problem in that it doesn’t have Haste. It can be used multiple times and sacrificing a creature works with the theme of some of the ideas I have.

Patriarch’s BiddingExpensive at 5 mana but it does return multiples all at once. Not really in the spirit of a true Reanimation deck because of the cost, but I bet you never thought that Goblin-Biddings was a Reanimation combo deck.

comes into play, you may return target Dragon card from your graveyard to play.BR: All Dragons get +1/+1 until end of turn

What more do you want? A Dragon and it has built in Reanimation. It even can pump other Dragons.

The key combo in this Dragon is that it can bring another copy of itself into play. Of course, they’re Legendary so they’ll both die as soon as state based effects are checked, so you need a way around that. The return target Dragon Card ability is triggered and goes onto the stack. You can sacrifice the first Bladewing the Risen

and the next one will come into play and it can target the one you just sacrificed. Over and over again.

Once you’ve established the fact that you can cause an infinite loop of creatures appearing, you need to do something with that. Preferably something that wins the game. You win the game by taking your opponent to zero, by decking (when they try and draw from an empty library), or by a couple of “I win” cards like Battle of the Wits.

From my search of the cards available in online Extended, the only one that seems relevant for the damage route is Blasting Station

the turn before as your discard source, then you could be doing 11 points of damage with one swing and you’ll still have 7 points of damage left on the table.

I discussed some dragons as potential targets in my previous article. Kamigawa introduced a few new ones.Kokusho, Yosei and Keiga are all potential targets. Kokusho will do 5 points of damage and you’ll gain 5 life if it dies and hits the graveyard. Yosei will tap some lands and Keiga will steal a creature. If you play the standard Blue/Black colors of Reanimator, then you could actually hardcast Kokusho and Keiga.

Testing

One good thing about the Extended rotation is that the Magic the gathering Online card pool and Extended will match up. I have a pretty deep collection in my MTGO account, so I’m able to make most decks I set my mind to. This makes it a good testing tool in that I can find opponents just about anytime of the day or night. Since I often am on the road and fly to the USA or somewhere else in Asia fairly often, this actually helps a great deal.

The downside to MTGO is that the games do take a while to play and you do need to buy all the cards you need. It also is really clunky to use when you have a looping combo as you need to step through each loop manually instead of just demonstrating the loop and then choosing a number of times the loop runs and then going from there. You also can use Magic Workstation (frowned on by Wizards but I like it and use it) or Apprentice (actually has an agreement with Wizards and used by many more old school players). The two main advantages of these programs are that they’re free and they both have large pools of players that use them so you can also find opponents fairly easy.

If you’re looking for people to play against using some of the free programs, you can try o-gaming.com and find just about as many opponents as you want.

I tested using MTGO (my username is pretty easy to figure out). First in the Casual room and then in the Tournament practice room after too many people whined about my Rares even though I was playing a Dragon theme deck. I had decided on a Blue / Black build and was trying Dragon Beats in the main and the Blasting Station

My tests were going OK (I was winning over 50% of my matches), so I started looking for a tournament to play in. The best ones to test in are the Premier tournaments as you get to play multiple rounds.

If you want to play different decks and experiment, you really can’t be too concerned about your rating. Since Online ratings do not mean much, I usually don’t care if I lose like crazy when I play a deck. That means that my rating is often below 1600 (which does hurt little when you’re looking for a more serious testing experience in the tournament practice room as some will avoid you), but I’m not that caught up in my Online account’s rating so I don’t mind.

I find that you only really get a good test on just how good a deck is by running it in a couple of tournaments. Testing in the free play rooms is OK, but you need the trial by fire as well. If you use Magic Workstation, o-gaming.com has a fair number of tournaments as well and they’re free to enter. I used to use FNM to test out new T2 deck ideas because the effect on my rating was pretty tiny and the games played there did help.

I went 1-4 in the tournament (and dropped, there was 1 round left) and my one win was a bye. What was doing better than just holding its own in the practice room was not strong enough at all against tuned tournament decks. I lost to RDW, Affinity, Scepter-Tog, and a more regular Upheaval

I wasn’t surprised that the deck stumbled against tuned tournament decks, but I had thought that it would be able to steal a match or two. The biggest problem against the RDW deck was the fact that I was tapping to attack. If I used Death to get a creature into play, I was still in trouble as I was down a lot of life and didn’t have Akroma’s broad shoulders to rest on.

This is a good example of using colors other than Blue in a Reanimation deck. Fecudity is used with the Bladewing loop to draw through your deck and find the winning card. If you have the Altar in play, you can build up as much mana as you want and then fill your hand with the kill spells and more reanimation if you want to try for the Blasting Station

to go find a Bladewing and Sakura Tribal Elder might help over Bird of Paradise as you’re a little low in mana with this list and Birds tend to die very quickly once cast.

This deck was fun in the more casual room, but didn’t do as well in the tournament practice room. Decks like Goblins and Affinity are so fast that you need a much more consistent combo and Diabolic Tutor